Sheet feeding and folding device



Nov. 19, 1957 w. w. HERRICK SHEET FEEDING FOLDING DEVICE 2 Sheets-Sheet 1 Filed Jan. 6. 1954 INVENTQR Y 14450 Haemck ATTORNEY Nov. 19,1957 w. w. HERRICK 2,813,714

SHEET FEEDING AND FOLDING DEVICE Filed Jan. 6,1954 2 SheetLs-Sheet z lla 11b *T .T- T." +2173? T 1; r" 36 53 47 54. i l l 41- L/WJV\ A luv, NTOR ATTORNEY United States Patent i 2,813,714 SHEET FEEDING AND FOLDING DEVICE William Wilson Herrick, Stamford, Conn., assignor to Pitney-Bowes, Inc., Stamford, Conn., a corporation of Delaware Application January 6, 1954, Serial No. 402,499 2 Claims. 01. 270 -68) This invention relates to sheet folding and particularly to a sheet folding machine of the buckle chute type, which is of simple construction, so that it may be made economically and be thus available for more extensive use, and is an improvement on'the folding machine described and claimed in a copending application of Hanson, Roman, and Bach, Serial No. 327,996, filed December 26, 1952, now U. S. Patent No. 2,766,040.

In said application, sheets to be folded are fed by hand one at a time to the advancing and folding rollers which are driven by an electric motor, and the folded sheets are passed to and collected by a receiving table.

An object of the present invention is to provide the folding machine of the type illustrated and described in said copending application with means for automatically separating and advancing to the folding rollers one sheet at a time from a stack of sheets supported on a paper table.

A feature of this invention is the attainment of a high degree of simplicity without sacrificing the ruggedness and efficiency of known sheet feeding used in folding machines. This is accomplished by so organizing and arranging the drive for the sheet feeding roller that solely one friction wheel is necessary to drive the roller from power-operated means which drives the advancing and folding rollers, thus obviating the necessity of multipart drives heretofore employed. Further, according to the present invention, the sheet feeding mechanism including the power take-off friction wheel is mounted on and incorporated as a part of the paper table, thus obviating the need for additional supporting structure.

A further feature of the present invention is the provision of an automatic feed unit including a paper table, a separator abutment and sheet feed roller, and drive therefor carried by the table which may be used as a replacement for the table of an existing folder, which can be easily applied thereto without the use of tools to convert the folder from a manual to an automatic feed type machine. The friction wheel for driving the sheet feed roller is preferably so located relative to the mounting means for the table that the table and parts attached thereto efiect suflicient weight to yieldingly press the friction wheel into contact with its cooperating powerdriven device.

As will be pointed out below, according to the present invention the mounting and adjustment of the abutment for the sheet feed roller is greatly simplified and improved.

A preferred embodiment of the invention is illustrated in the accompanying drawings, wherein:

Fig. 1 is a side elevation of the folding machine showing the present invention as applied thereto.

Fig. 2 is a vertical section taken through the machine.

Fig. 3 is a fragmentary vertical sectional view showing a stack of sheets on the paper table and one sheet being fed and folded.

Fig. 4 is a plan view of the paper table to which the present invention is applied, showing the sheet feeding roller and the slip clutch in section.

Patented Nov. 19,

The present invention is illustrated in the accompanying drawings, by way of example, in connection with a machine of the type described and claimed in said application Serial No. 327,996.

The folding machine illustrated comprisesside plates 10 held together by tie rods 11, 11a and 11b, and between the side plates there are plates 12 and 13 forming between them folding chutes 14 and 15, the effective lengths of which are controlled respectively by adjustable stops 16 and 17, to control the depths of the folds in a folded strip.

Also mounted between the side plates 10 are folding rollers 18, 19, 20 and 21. The central roller 18 is preferably made of rubber or similar material and the rollers 19, 20 and 21 are yieldingly urged by suitable means toward the central roller so as to provide feeding engagement between the roller 18 and the other rollers on sheet material passed between them.

The roller 18 is provided with a shaft 22 which extends beyond the side plates 10 and has secured to it a pulley 23, which is driven by a flexible belt 24 which also passes over a pulley 25 on the shaft of an electric motor 26 which is continuously operative while the machine is in use and continuously drives the central roller 18.

When a sheet is passed between the rollers 18 and 19 its leading end rides up the chute 14 until it is engaged by the stop 16, whereupon the sheet buckles and folds as it passes between the rollers 18 and 21. The folded part continues through the chute 15 until it engages the stop 17, whereupon the sheet buckles again, folds and passes between the rollers 18 and 20 and from the latter onto a receiving table 27. t

The folding machine shown in said copending appli: cation is provided with a sheet supporting table along which each sheet to be folded is slid by hand to bring its leading edge into engagement with the rollers 18 and 19, the table being removably supported on the machine frame by means of cross rods 11a and 1112.

'As stated above, one of the objects of this invention is to readily convert a hand-fed folding machine into an automatically-fed machine and further to do this without the necessity of employing tools or making any other adjustments to or changes in the existing machine other than to remove the paper table with which the machine is furnished.

To this end the present invention provides a special paper table 28, the forward end of which, like the regular paper table, is provided with notched ends 29 to engage the rod 11a and notched lugs 30to engage the rod 11b; To attach the table 28 to the machine the end of the table, while slightly elevated from the position shown in Fig. 2, is inserted between the rods 11a and 11b until the notched end 29 engages the rod 11a, after which the table is allowed to swing downwardly so that the notched lug 30 engages the cross rod 111).

The table 28 has lateral flanges 31 to which are secured bearing plates 32 for a sheet feed roller shaft 33 which extends across the table from side to side. The table also'includes sheet side guides 34 which are adjustable and are held in adjusted position by manually operable clamps 35. The forward ends of the side guides 34 are provided with downwardly extending fingers 36 forming a narrowing throat to direct the leading edge of an advancing sheet to be folded to the folding rollers 18 and 19.

A stack of sheets to be folded is placed on the table 28 and the top sheet is separated from the stack and fed to the folding rollers 18 and 19 by'the cooperation of a sheet feed roller 37 and a separator abutment 38 forming between them a narrowing throat for the longitudinally offset leading edges of the sheets in the stack.

As stated above, both the abutment 38 and the sheet feed roller 37 are mounted on the table 23 as a permanent part thereof and are properly positioned relative to the folding rollers by the mere mounting of the paper table 23 on the folding machine.

The abutment as shown is preferably in the form of an abrasive surfaced roller held against rotation as the sheets are separated and advanced. In the form of the invention herein disclosed, the roller is mounted in cars 39 bent up from a plate 40 secured at one end to the underside of the paper table at 41. The plate 40 is flexible and has its other end secured to the underside of the table 28 by an adjustable connection so that the position of the abutment may be varied relative to the sheet feed roller 37 so as to leave just sufficient space for one sheet to pass between the sheet feed roller and the abutment.

This adjustable connection includes a threaded stud 42 secured to the underside of the paper table, a spring 43 around the stud and located between the underside of the paper table and the plate 40, and a threaded nut 44 on the underside of the plate 40. When it is desired to adjust the abutment so as to accommodate thicker or thinner sheets to be folded, it is merely necessary to rotate the nut 40 in one direction to move the abutment closer to the sheet feeding roller or in the other direction to permit the spring 43 to move the abutment away from the sheet feeding roller.

According to the present invention the sheet feed roller is driven by the engagement of one single member with a power-operated means on the folding machine which drives the folding rollers and this single member makes its engagement with the power-operated driving means as an incident to the mounting of the paper table on the machine and without further attention on the part of the person making the installation.

In the form of the invention herein illustrated, this is accomplished by providing a friction wheel 45 on the sheet feed roller shaft 33 which is of such diameter and so located on the paper table that when the paper table is in place on the machine its periphery will engage the outer surface of the belt 24 which extends between the electric motor and the pulley 23 so as to be driven by the belt. As shown, the friction wheel 45 includes a disk 450: having a V-shaped groove holding a rubber tire 45b of circular cross-section.

Thus it will be seen that during the operation of the machine the sheet feed roller shaft will be continuously operated in a direction tending to advance the uppermost sheet from the stack to the folding rollers.

In the broader aspects of the invention, the friction wheel 45 may engage the belt 24 or other power-driven part at any convenient place. geous, as shown in Fig. 1, to have the friction wheel 45 engage the belt 24 as the belt passes over the pulley 23, so that the belt is backed up by the pulley at the point of engagement of the wheel 45 with the belt.

Frictional driving engagement between the belt and the friction wheel 45 may be maintained by depending merely upon the resiliency of the rubber tire 45b or the belt, or both. However, by arranging the friction wheel so that it may actually rest on the belt and pulley and allowing some space between the cross rod 11b and the notched lug 30 on the adjacent side of the table, the friction wheel 45 may be maintained in engagement with the belt 24 by the weight of the table and the parts thereon.

When the leading edge of a sheet to be folded reaches the folding rollers 18 and 19, it travels much more rapidly than it did under the influence of the sheet feed roller and to permit this accelerated movement of the sheet a slip clutch is provided between the friction wheel 45 and the sheet feed roller 37.

In the form of the invention herein illustrated, this However, it is advantais accomplished by providing a slip clutch 46 between the shaft 33 and the sheet feed roller 37. As shown in Fig. 4, this slip clutch is of the friction type and comprises a collar 47 secured to the shaft 33, a pressure disk 48 slidably mounted on the shaft and coupled to the collar 47 by a pin 49 on the collar engaging a hole 50 in the pressure disk.

An expansion spring 51 coiled around the shaft 33 tends to force the pressure disk 48 away from the collar 47 and toward the sheet feed roller 37. A friction washer 52 is placed between the pressure disk 48 and the sheet feed roller. At the other side of the sheet feed roller there is another friction washer 53 between the sheet feed roller and a collar 54 fixed on the shaft.

The collars 47 and 54 are so adjusted that the sheet feed roller 37 is driven by the shaft 33 with sufiicient positiveness to move the uppermost of a shingled pile of sheets to the folding roller but weak enough to permit the sheet feed roller to rotate independently of the shaft when the sheet to be folded is taken over by the folding rollers.

What is claimed is:

1. The combination with a sheet folding machine including a supporting structure having sheet receiving and sheet folding rollers mounted thereon; of a driven element having a frictional surface and having a driving connection with one of said rollers, a sheet supporting plate having one end detachably mounted on the supporting structure and the other end yieldably extending beyond the point of attachment on the supporting structure, a friction sheet feeding roller including a shaft therefor supported by said plate, and a friction drive wheel fixed to the shaft at a location which places the peripheral surface thereof directly over and in engagement with the driven element, the yieldability of the extended plate portion and weight thereof causing a sutficient downward force of the plate to effect a frictional driving pressure between the surface of the friction drive wheel and the surface of the driven element.

2. The combination with a sheet folding machine including a supporting structure having sheet receiving and sheet folding rollers mounted thereon; of a driven pulley having a frictional surface and having a driving connection with one of said rollers, a sheet supporting plate having one end detachably mounted on the supporting structure and the other end yieldably extending beyond the point of attachment on the supporting structure, a friction sheet feeding roller including a shaft therefor supported by said plate, and a friction drive wheel fixed to the shaft at a location which places the peripheral surface thereof directly over and in engagement with the driven element, the yieldability of the extended plate portion and weight thereof causing a sufficient downward force of the plate to effect a frictional driving pressure between the surface of the friction drive wheel and the surface of the driven pulley.

References Cited in the file of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS 2,058,876 Hitchcock Oct. 27, 1936 2,136,977 Mentges Nov. 15, 1938 2,224,137 Breman et al. Dec. 10, 1940 2,224,138 Trydal Dec. 10, 1940 2,492,577 Janke Dec. 27, 1949 2,614,837 Cuthbert Oct. 21, 1952 2,626,148 Johnson Jan. 20, 1953 2,652,248 Johnson Sept. 15, 1953 2,655,374 Townsley Oct. 13, 1953 

